Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Trump’s Syria Conundrum

Reports and videos currently
streaming from Syria reveal a new large-scale, regime-led attack by
chemical weapons against the civilian population of the city of Idlib. Close to
a hundred people have been reported killed, including many children, while
hundreds were said to have been receiving critical treatment when Assad regime
warplanes targeted their hospital. The final death toll will not be
known for days.

This is the political reality
that comes from accepting the political reality of the Bashar Assad regime's
survival in Syria: killing will now happen on an even larger-scale and with a
greater sense of impunity. That sense of impunity flows from the reality of
impunity.

For years, Syria’s pro-democracy
and human rights activists warned the Obama administration about the impact of
its repeated statements that it would not intervene in the Syrian conflict come
hell or high water. Our warnings were ignored. When the administration finally
drew its red line, it tied it exclusively to the use of chemical weapons by the
regime at a time when the latter was using everything else in its arsenal to
terrorize the civilian population, including its Scud missiles. And when the
regime finally breached that red line in August 2013, killing more than 1,000
civilians in the East Ghouta region near the capital of Damascus, President
Obama unceremoniously backed down. He would later pride himself on that retreat even as many in his own
party sought to hide their faces in shame.

Now it’s the Trump
administration’s turn.

Perhaps as a result of loosened targeting rules or perhaps not, more civilian
targets have accidently been hit by U.S. warplanes, including a mosque and a school, killing dozens and making America directly a
culprit in the wanton bloodletting in Syria.

Yet, it’s the recent statements by Secretary Rex Tillerson, UN
Ambassador Nikki Haley and White House Spokesman Sean Spicer that take the
cake.

During his recent visit to Turkey
and following meetings with Turkish officials, Secretary Tillerson said that
the "longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian
people."

Back in New York, Ambassador
Haley told wire reporters that "Our priority is no longer to sit and focus
on getting Assad out.” (We should pause here to note that getting Assad out was
never really a priority for the Obama administration; words are not enough to
get a killer out of a country.) The ambassador went on to wonder "Do we
think he's a hindrance? . . . Yes,” she said answering her own question. But
"Are we going to sit there and focus on getting him out? . . . No,” she
assured. The ambassador would later walk back her comments, telling all that
Assad is a “war criminal.” But she had already made the main point: war
criminal or hindrance, he was not to be harassed.

Hours later came Mr. Spicer, who
reiterated the comments made by Tillerson and Haley, and then spoke of a new
“political reality that we have to accept in terms of where we are right now.”
The opportunity to do something “with respect to Assad” was lost under the
previous administration, he noted.

Spicer actually does have a
legitimate point here; the Obama Administration’s Syria policy does complicate
and limit the options available to the Trump administration now. But to blame
the Obama administration, as Mr. Spicer did when he described the attack as
“consequence of the past administration's weakness and irresolution," for
this latest horrendous attack—an attack that happened on Mr. Trump’s watch and
followed the reassuring messages that his administration has been sending to
Mr. Assad for weeks now—is both appalling and repugnant, especially when we
consider that Mr. Trump himself opposed enforcing the red line back in 2013:

AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER,
DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM
THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!

Those of us who have been
following the situation in Syria since the onset of its revolution in early
2011 cannot forget or ignore the miscalculations of the Obama administration in
this regard, or their tragic consequences, and we may not be able to forgive,
soon or ever, Obama’s pride in abandoning the Syrian people. But that does not
mean that we can afford to engage in a new round of Shirk
‘n’ Shift: shirking responsibility for the current situation and shifting
the blame to other parties. This is a recipe for more killing and more
suffering.

It’s Mr. Trump who now occupies
the White House, and it’s his responsibility to work with his cabinet members
to formulate a more robust policy that can help end the suffering of the Syrian
people. Blaming the Obama administration shows a lack of resolve or worse, a
willingness to normalize a situation in which children get gassed in their
sleep, hospitals are regularly targeted as part of a campaign
to intimidate the civilian population, hundreds of thousands are forced to live under siege and in famine conditions for refusing
to submit, millions are driven from their homes as part of a
major ethnic cleansing campaign, and tens of thousands of dissidents are systematically liquidated in state prisons and
hospitals.

Could anyone really believe that
such a policy will make anyone safe, let alone make America great?

When the United States government
reassures war criminals that they will not be held accountable for their
crimes, is it any wonder that they keep on killing?

Notes:

Let’s see how Mr. Trump plans to
translate his powerful statements here into action. He’s clearly puting the credibility
of his administration on the line here. Bigly.

President Trump: "My
attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much" since the
chemical attack https://t.co/n4qMhMNn31

"This is the
political reality that comes out of accepting ... the regime's survival,"
said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian-American pro-democracy activist who lives in
Maryland. "The regime will now kill on a larger scale and with greater
impunity."

And for those wondering about the
urgency behind the need for regime change in Syria, Senator Marco Rubio explains:

Marco Rubio gives impassioned plea
to remove Assad during Syria presser:"This goes to the core of who
we are." https://t.co/B6fakXurLM

Go ahead, patronize me!

About Ammar

I am a Syrian-American Author and Blogger, and I currently work as a political analyst at Alhurra. The Delirica is a blog that relates my personal views and takes on current developments which do not necessarily reflect those espoused by any institution with which I am affiliated. My most recent publication is titled “The Irreverent Activist” and is available on Amazon.

The Delirica

Throughout the years, I have operated a variety of political, intellectual and artistic blogs in both Arabic and English. However, I am currently relying on The Delirica as my main personal online outlet for political analysis in English. All my previous online writings in English can be accessed at Ammar.World, The Daily Digest of Global Delirium and related sites. Arabic readers should refer to Hartaqah.